Almost two years ago we had the pleasure of premiering Liminal Shroud‘s stunning second album All Virtues Ablaze. In an accompanying review I wrote:
Across four expansive tracks on their new album, the music itself is vast and towering, awe-struck and splendid, but also creates a sense of purging, of a kind of ruthless but necessary scourging, a furious confrontation against what’s dismal and discouraging.
In its changing moods the album at times seems daunted by the seeming futility of human existence, and at times it’s beautiful in its portrayal of melancholy, yet also seems to be a fierce rejection of beleaguered submission and an embrace of the horizon that might lie ahead. Like broken rocks buffeted by surging tides, people can withstand the assaults of life and endure, so it seems to say.
Photo Credit: Hehr Photography
Looking back on those words (and a lot more) today, I’m a bit embarrassed by how poetical I was trying to be, but it was that kind of album, so inspirational in both dark and blazing ways that more mundane prose just didn’t seem adequate.
And now these black metal progressives from Victoria, BC are returning with a third album. Entitled Visions of Collapse, it will be released on July 5th by Willowtip Records. Liminal Shroud introduce it this way:
“On this record we have elevated everything in our arsenal to new heights. Serpentine songwriting and cathartic conviction reflect again the elemental forces of destruction of the coast, and capturing moments of sorrow, solitude and grandeur, we seek to find ourselves in annihilation. Adherence to tradition and the will to push ever-onward find their fusion in the interplay of melody, rhythmic vigor, and subtle progressive voicing. Primordial oceans churn, searing winds howl, and a baleful void opens above – cast yourself in and submit to the scythe.”
In other words, this isn’t going to be a mundane experience either.
The new album includes five songs. Four of them are in the range of 9-11 minutes, and one of those long ones was the first song to be publicly revealed from the album. I’ll repeat some of what I wrote about it soon after it surfaced:
The glittering and seductive acoustic-guitar instrumental and whispered words that open “Nucleonic Blight” are inviting, but the music begins to build toward a different destination. The thump of the kick drum, the pounding of toms, clanging chords, and acid-drenched snarls create a depressive mood — and then the music crashes like waves of distress.
The riffing shimmers and blazes, fiery and vast, above rapidly changing rhythms and ear-shredding shrieks, but the overarching mood remains one of torment and despair, even when the music seems to tower, and especially when it becomes a frantic seizure of sound around furiously blasting drums and a hurtling bass.
Like warped bells, the guitars also chime and seem to cry out, even more wrenching than before, and then burn again in fevers of pain. More changes come, bringing moods of grief and gloom, yearning and hopelessness, while the rhythm section continue switching up their own contributions.
A remarkably elaborate and ever-changing song, it’s nonetheless constant in its channeling of dark moods. The music suits the themes, as described by the band:
“Nucleonic Blight” speaks to humanity’s inherent flaws and futility… the inescapable determination to repeat and relive our rapacious desires, the memory of which lies in the soil of the earth, hangs in the firmament above, and runs through our veins, foreordained and inexorable.
And now we come to the song we’re premiering today — “Malaspina“. It’s the only song on the album with a conventional length, just a bit more than four minutes and appearing between the much longer “Resolve” and the album’s epic closing song “The Carving Scythe“. But, not surprisingly, Liminal Shroud do a lot with those four minutes.
They open with a piercing and rapidly swirling riff that’s electrifying yet somehow disturbing, and behind it a heavy bass throbs and groans, and the drums work through a sequence of gripping progressions.
Following a quick spasm of guitar delirium, the song takes a darker turn, drenching the senses in riffing that sizzles but seems to wail, providing the backdrop to deep and gloomy singing. However, those feelings of despair and sorrow give way to what sounds like fury, channeled by battering drums, scalding and cutting screams, and waves of dire and distressing melody.
The rapidly swirling lead guitar returns, again electrifying and gripping in its impact, but the dual guitar harmony that brings the song to an end is, if anything, more despairing in its mood than anything that’s come before.
Multi-faceted, moving, and memorable, “Malaspina” stands very well on its own, even outside the context of the album as a whole (which we’ll have more to say about at a later date).
Visions of Collapse was co-produced, recorded, and mixed by Matt Roach; with additional audio engineering by Emily Ryan – Rain City Recorders, Vancouver BC, Canada. The album was mastered by the masterful Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studios, UK. The album is completed by the cover art of Misanthropic Art.
Willowtip will release the album in variant vinyl editions, on digipak CD, and digitally, along with apparel. For more info and ordering options, check the links below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://liminalshroud.bandcamp.com/album/visions-of-collapse
https://www.willowtip.com/bands/details/liminal-shroud.aspx
LIMINAL SHROUD:
https://linktr.ee/liminalshroud
https://www.facebook.com/liminalshroudofficial
https://www.instagram.com/liminalshroud